“Okay, okay,” I say, attempting to regain control. “Wrap it up. What do you need?”
“Critter heaters,” Reid reminds me, and I roll my eyes.
But Reid is bound and determined to show two wild animals all the comforts of home, so after a few minutes I give up and instruct him on microwaving a few heating pads and bringing them along with some blankets into the animals’ cages without anyone ripping his hand off. Andi wanders off, probably because this is boring.
Luckily, Victoria and Fluffy—R-85 and C-347—are used to him and uninterested in making a fuss.
He’s still got me on video chat when he goes back into the house, and as soon as the door slams, there’s a demanding meow.
“Yes, your majesty,” Reid deadpans. “I think she smells blood,” he says to me, since he just got finished bribing the outdoor critters.
“How’s she doing?” I ask, though Reid’s already flipping the camera around to show a giant off-white cat sitting neatly by a food bowl, looking imperious. “Is Reid treating you right?” I ask her.
Behind me, there’s a gasp.
“Is that Dolly?” Andi asks, coming back to sit next to me. “Hello. Goodness, you’re regal.”
“Don’t inflate her ego,” Reid mutters.
“You bossing Reid around?” I ask Dolly, who blinks.
“Yes,” he says, and Dolly yawns. There’s a toothsome display. “She wants to know when you’re coming back so she can bite you at five thirty in the morning.”
“Dolly, you wouldn’t,” Andi says. She’s leaning on the table, her chin in one hand, gazing at my enormous cat. I think she’s about two seconds from reaching out and petting the screen.
“She would and does,” Reid mutters. “It’s like living with a panther or something. You’re gonna come home and she’ll be feasting on my body that she’s dragged to the top of a bookcase.”
“That fluffster?” Andi says. “She would never.”
Reid and I snort in unison, and Andi cracks up.
“Even Gideon knows his princess cupcake would eat a person if her dinner was a few hours late,” Reid says, flipping the camera back around so we can see him.
“Princess cupcake?” I ask, incredulous.
“You think I don’t hear the things you call her?”
“I’ve never in my life called Dolly a—”
“Oh, my god, it was a metaphor or something,” Reid says, rolling his eyes so hard I’m afraid they might get stuck that way. I take a deep breath and remind myself that human brains don’t finish maturing until a person’s mid-twenties and that at twenty, Reid is basically still a teenager.
“That’s not what a metaphor is,” Andi points out.
“Both of you.”
“We’re running the battery on the iPad down,” I announce, because I’m suddenly unsure that I’d like Andi and Reid getting along too well just yet. Seems like a situation where I could be easily outnumbered. “We’ll talk in the morning if you need to.”
“I’ll keep you updated on Vicky and Fluffy,” he says, and now he’s making his trying to look serious and failing face. “Stay warm up there. Share body heat if you need to.”
My face instantly goes hot.
“Okay. Thanks,” I mutter, reaching for the end call button.
“Make safe choices!” Reid shouts, just as it disconnects. I sigh, face still burning, even though I can feel Andi laughing silently next to me.
“He’s got your number, huh?” she asks, still laughing.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I grumble, and she heads into the bathroom to brush her teeth while I stay at the table, staring at the blank screen of the iPad and try to pick apart guilt and shame and desire and embarrassment, but I only succeed in knotting it all together.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ANDI
“Do you turn into snakes at night?” I ask, arms folded, standing in the doorway to the bedroom. “Is that the problem?”
He pauses where he’s rearranging the wood in the wood stove, then turns to stare at me.
“What?” he finally asks.
“Or some kind of hideous monster?” I go on. “Like that Greek myth where the woman married a god but wasn’t allowed to look at him at night.”
We stare at each other, and with each passing millisecond I’m less certain I know what I’m talking about.
“You mean Cupid and Psyche?” he finally says, because of course Gideon knows this.
“Sure.”
“She wasn’t allowed to look at him because he was too pretty.”
“Is that—”
“No.”
There’s a note in his voice that makes me stop what I was about to say and go silent instead. Gideon’s been a little extra gruff and a little extra awkward—above his usual baseline of gruff and awkward—since he got off the phone with Reid, and damned if I know why. I just know that usually when I badger him about sleeping in a separate bed in the same room, like a reasonable adult, he blushes and almost smiles and rolls his eyes and then packs me off to bed by myself.
But now he’s shoving wood around again and I’m standing in this doorway, wearing avocado-patterned pants and his sweater, wondering what happened and how I’m supposed to fix it. Is it because we kissed? Is it because I said it was neat that Reid transitioned, like the world’s biggest dork? Was I insufficiently obsequious to his cat? Are we both just cold and tired?
“We don’t even have heating pads here,” I finally say, and to my relief it comes out light and teasing.
Gideon sighs. “Now what point are you trying to make?”
“That the couch is probably bad for your back,” I say, mentally thanking Reid for that bit of ammunition.
“It’s fine,” Gideon says, and swings the glass door to the wood stove shut. “And do you really think that mattress is so much better?”
Well, having slept on one, no.
“I want the record to show that I tried to offer you comfort, like, thirty times,” I tell him, and finally, that gets a faint smile as he brushes his hands together, turning toward me. The relief I feel is ridiculous. Maybe he’s not mad at me; maybe he doesn’t regret everything we did. I could ask but it’s easier to accept his smile and push past it.
The light in here is low: two oil lamps mounted on the stone fireplace itself, the electric lantern casting a white angle on the far wall, where our coats are hanging, and the dancing orange light from the wood stove. Gideon’s lovely in it, all his hard lines softer, his hair gently curling around his ears. I swear his eyelashes look a mile long right now.
“Thank you,” he says, and it’s a little stiff, a little formal. “Do you need more blankets?”
“I think I’m okay.”
“Night, Andi.”
“Night, Gideon,” I say, then go into the bedroom and get under approximately seventeen blankets.
Seventeen blankets isn’t enough.
I would never survive in the wild.